Former President Donald Trump claimed that he — not President Joe Biden — would protect Social Security and warned of a “bloodbath” if he loses in November while campaigning for Senate candidate Bernie Moreno in Ohio.

Trump, speaking at a windy airport outside Dayton on Saturday, praised his running mate as “America's number one hero” and “a political outsider who has spent his entire life building up Ohio communities.”

“He's going to be a warrior in Washington,” Trump said days after securing enough delegates to win the 2024 Republican nomination.

Moreno faces Secretary of State Frank LaRose and State Sen. Matt Dolan in the Republican primary on Tuesday. LaRose and Moreno have joined the pro-Trump faction of the party, while Dolan has the support of more establishment Republicans, including Gov. Mike DeWine and former Sen. Rob Portman.

The Buckeye Values ​​PAC, a group supporting Moreno's candidacy, hosted Saturday's rally. But Trump used the stage to deliver a profanity-laced version of his usual rally speech, which once again painted a dire picture for the country if Biden wins a second term.

“If I'm not elected, it will be a bloodbath… It will be a bloodbath for the country,” he warned while talking about the impact of offshoring on the country's auto industry and his plans to increase car tariffs. Foreign-made cars.

Later, Trump claimed that “if this election isn't won, I'm not sure you'll have another election in this country.”

Trump has repeatedly noted the difficulty of reading from his teleprompters, which can clearly be seen in 35 mph winds.

Moreno has been a critic of Trump, a wealthy Cleveland businessman who backed Marco Rubio for president in the 2016 Republican primary, and once tweeted that listening to Trump was “like watching a car crash that makes you sick, but you can stop looking.” In 2021, NBC News reported on an email exchange around the time of Trump's first presidential election in which Moreno referred to Trump as “crazy” and “crazy.”

But Moreno on Saturday praised Trump as a “great American” and criticized members of his party who criticized the former president, who this week became his party's presumptive nominee for the third consecutive election.

“I'm sick and tired of Republicans who say, 'I support President Trump's policies but I don't like the man,'” he said as he joined Trump on stage.

Trump also denied the recent accusations against Moreno, comparing them to the attacks he has faced over the years, including criminal indictments. Trump has been charged in four separate cases ranging from his handling of classified documents to his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

“He's getting very tough phony treatment from the Democrats right now,” Trump said. “We will not stand up to that.”

The Associated Press reported Thursday that in 2008, someone with access to Moreno's work email account created a profile on an adult website looking for “men to have one-on-one sex with.” The AP was unable to confirm that Moreno himself created it. Moreno's attorney said a former intern created the account and provided a statement from the intern, Dan Ritchie, who said he created the account “as part of a juvenile prank.”

Questions about the profile have been circulating in GOP circles over the past month, stoking frustration among senior Republican operatives about Moreno's potential vulnerability in the general election, according to seven people with direct knowledge of conversations about how to handle the matter. They requested anonymity to avoid confronting Trump and his allies.

In his remarks, Trump also accused Biden of posing a threat to Social Security as he continued to clean up comments from an interview earlier this week in which he appeared to express openness to cuts.

“Your Social Security will be gone,” he warned of a second Biden term, despite Biden's pledge to protect and strengthen Social Security as he faces a projected budget shortfall. “You won't be able to get Social Security with this man in office because he's destroying our country's economy. That includes Medicare, by the way, and older Americans are going to be in big trouble.”

“I made a promise that I would always keep Social Security and Medicare. We will always keep it. We will never break it,” he said.

The comments came after Trump, in an interview with CNBC, answered a question about Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid by saying: “There's a lot you can do in terms of entitlements, in terms of cutting income, in terms of stealing as well.” “And poor entitlement management, very poor entitlement management. There are huge amounts of things and numbers of things you can do.”

Trump also continued to criticize Biden over his handling of the border and the migrant crisis. He criticized Dolan, calling him a “weak Reno” — a Republican in name only — and accusing him of “trying to become the next Mitt Romney.” He also criticized the Dolan family, which owns the Cleveland baseball team, for changing its name from the Cleveland Indians to the Cleveland Guardians.

Trump was joined at the rally by Ohio Senator J.D. Vance and South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem, who have disagreed with Moreno and are considered potential vice presidential candidates.

Trump's decision to support Moreno was a major blow to Larauz, who had taken several steps to gain his support. Just days after entering the Senate race, LaRose endorsed Trump for president — bucking a previous position that the state's elections chief should remain politically neutral. The following month, he fired a long-trusted aide after old tweets in which the staffer criticized Trump surfaced.

The winner of Tuesday's primary will face third-term Sen. Sherrod Brown, seen as among the nation's most vulnerable Democrats, in November.

Brown, who was first elected in 2006 and was unopposed in this year's primary, was able to retain his seat even as the state shifted to the right. In his last re-election in 2018, he defeated then-Rep. Jim Renacci by about 7 percentage points. Two years later, Ohio voted for then-President Trump by 8 points.